Unnamed Project
Premise
Setting: Fantasy/Tribal
Rating: PG to TV-14 (pending)
Genre: Action/Adventure
Status: BRAINSTORMING
There once was a land in the womb of the world.
This project is still in its early brainstorming stages, so I'm still in the process of giving it a name. I was inspired by one of my favorite shows, Avatar: the Last Airbender. Avatar is a successful anime-inspired show that takes aspects of many different Asian cultures and mythologies and blends them into a beautifully detailed fantasy world. The show works because the cultures it draws from are used accurately, extensively and creatively, from clothing to martial arts styles.
Then I thought of anime shows about characters on a journey that get into random misadventures on the way: Samurai Champloo, Michiko to Hatchin, even Cowboy Bebop. That's when it hit me. Americanime is a fusion of cultures by definition; it is a culture outside of Japan using their art style to tell a story that relates to a different demographic. Avatar made many people, even non-anime fans, interested in Asian mythos and culture.
Well, I'm black. My ancestors probably came from Africa. Africa is still a "mystical" continent to the rest of the world mainly because it is one of the few places on Earth that still contains a vast number of civilizations that Westerners would consider "underdeveloped" and "primitive." Most people don't really know anything about Africa, myself included. In Africa there are a wonderful array of tribes and clans that live anachronistically in our computerized world. They dance with fetishes and pray to pantheons, calling upon spirits and dressing in lively costumes, otherworldly by our Western standards. (Of course, much of Africa is modernized, but I'm not interested in those parts.) The "magical" reality of much of this continent is both exotic and exciting to me—and seems to me a perfect setting for an anime-style series.
The concept of the series is a fusion of African mysticism (from its many different tribes) and seinen anime action. The show will take place in a fantasy land loosely based on ancient Africa. For right now, it's about a wandering orphan searching for something—not sure what yet. I was thinking his sister, but that's pretty much Bianca's story in Trinity Layer. He grew up in an orphanage that was owned by a hermitic shaman who knows a secret magic technique. This technique is sought after by many from rival tribes, all wanting to use the magic for their own gain. The shaman retired from a society of holy men after some event. Anyway, the main character is—for now—a silent protagonist, and his face is completely concealed, wrapped in bandages. I got the idea for his design from the character John in the French film Immortel (ad vitam). When he was a child, my main character was traumatized after watching his sister (not his real sister) die. Aside from him, his sidekick is a bratty little girl who does more than enough talking to make up for him. Together these two get into all sorts of adventures in search of his MacGuffin, and many supernatural spirits and foes await them along the way. The flow of the series was influenced by shows like Michiko to Hatchin and Samurai Champloo, and the movie adaptation of Osamu Tezuka's manga Dororo was a big influence on me, as well.
Besides all that, as my friend Wren pointed out, anime has a serious lack of black characters. The ones that do appear are few and far between, and a good number of them are (unfortunately) stereotypes. In contrast, white Americans and Europeans regularly show up as important characters in anime. And where the hell are all the black women? O_o
The popularity of the anime Afro Samurai helped to change that along with the satirical Americanime The Boondocks. Thinking of these shows and the aforementioned seinen shows, I thought that this project could introduce a cast of characters that consists almost entirely of black people, and respectfully portrayed ones, at that. The main character is black, as is his sidekick and love interest and everyone else in between. Avatar did the same thing; the main character was clearly Asian, perhaps influenced by Tibetan monks, and his friends were Chinese and Inuit. That world was (reasonably) populated by Asian characters. Thus, I don't find my idea outlandish, disrespectful, or racist at all.